


goldheart

by kingstier



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Tangled AU, magic dragons, magic hair you name it, magic rings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-29
Updated: 2015-04-28
Packaged: 2018-03-26 07:22:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3842125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingstier/pseuds/kingstier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thorin's day did not typically involve knocking strangers unconscious with his iron toed boots.</p>
<p>Nor did it typically involve sneaking out of his tower with the help of a criminal, just to go see the lantern festival he's been dreaming about his whole life. But, well, there's a first time for everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	goldheart

**Author's Note:**

> i started this last week after i saw some really cute [art](http://tosquinha.tumblr.com/post/116949567077/thorins-noodle-hair-gives-me-reason-to-live) & didnt realize there were already quite a few tangled au's out there... oops

“Confounded old wizards and their meddling!”  
  
_“Where’d he go?"_  
  
With a curse Bilbo throws himself into a narrow nook between a towering carven statue and a wall, clutching his satchel to his chest. Dozens of guards thunder past him shouting in their dwarven language and their footsteps echo in the pounding of Bilbo's heart. _They can't see you,_ he reassures himself, _you've got your ring on, just go!_  
  
He's about three hallways down from the throne room which means it's less than a ten minute walk (half of that, if he runs) to the front gates. With his magic ring on it should have been a breeze to reach the gates, only if it were not for the guard who had noticed the missing stone immediately after Bilbo took it. Because now there are dozens of guards moving in packs, roaming the halls at random trying to find the thief who dared to steal the King's jewel. As if there wasn't enough chaos already with the upcoming festival.  
  
Bilbo's only destination is _out_ and _somewhere very far away from dwarves_.  
  
He'd spent the two weeks of his stay in Erebor in the library, sneaking maps into a little corner where no one could see him frown at dwarvish runes. Using what he knew about the surrounding areas, he had figured out the fastest way to Dale, the direction and what to look for to cut into the Greenwood Forest, as well as the all the paths leading up to a place called Ravenhill, a lookout post of the mountain. Of course, what really mattered was the map and floor plans of Erebor itself, but there were too many winding paths for just one little hobbit alone. The fortnight he spent trying (and failing) to memorize the mountain city's streets and halls were all for null, because in the haze of panic Bilbo had turned no less than four wrong corners in his haste to not get caught.

Lucky for him, he caught the tail end of a shout of _close the gates!_  from a guard running by.

Bilbo eases out of the corner and follows the guard, making a break for it once he sees the slowly closing front gate. Upon exiting the mountain, he’d disheartened to find that there were guards walking amongst the common folk in the valley between Erebor and Dale. He’s not anywhere near inconspicuous in trying to make his way into Dale, he bumps into men and dwarves alike but in the bustle of excitement of the coming week, he goes completely unnoticed.

In a strange stroke of luck (the second time that day) he spots a palace horse tethered off to the side of an empty vendor’s area.

“Shh, easy,” he soothes it when he nears. He pulls off the ring and pats the horse’s mane, shushing it every other word, “You think it’d be alright if I took you out on a little adventure?”

The horse doesn’t answer—not that Bilbo expected it to—but he pulls himself up on it anyway. “Once a thief, always a thief,” he muses to himself. That’s two slights against the Kingdom now: a jewel belonging to the King himself, and horse (three, if you count illegal lodgings in library nooks and dusty closets). Fantastic.

He passes through the gates of Dale with a ruckus and the guards spot him in no time. “Just a little faster, girl,” he whispers to the horse, tugging on the reins when he sees the Greenwood Forest not far away. He barely hears the angry shouts of the guards when the horse leaps over a bush, sending them into the cover of trees. Bilbo rides hard for what feels like weeks, but it’s really only a few hours at most. The sun has set and the sky has darkened to almost black when Bilbo decides that it’s been far enough. He sets the horse loose with two apples and a soft _You did good_ and slips his ring back on his finger, because one can never be too sure when it came to the wood elves and their forest.

Bilbo travels farther west the next day and on that day’s end, he comes across a cave. With the mental map he’s managed to assemble, he recognized the cave as being carved into the slopes of the Mountains of Greenwood.  He feels the trickle of curiosity, one he hasn’t felt since the blasted day a wizard offered him an adventure, down to the tips of his toes pushing him to go farther in until he finds that it isn’t a cave at all. It’s a sort of tunnel—and on the other side, surrounded by the slopes of the mountain, is a valley with a single tower.

Once he’s climbed into the tower (because why _wouldn’t_ he?) he takes a moment to breathe, laying boneless on something soft that tickled his nose and threatened to make him sneeze. _My limbs are going to fall off,_ is his first thought when he rises to his knees, and his last is _what a soft rug._  
  
*  
  
Thorin’s day did not typically involve knocking strangers unconscious with his iron toed boots.  
  
And that wasn’t due to the fact that it was the closest thing he had on hand. No, on any typical day what he would’ve done was get out of bed when the sun was at a point high enough that it shined right through his window, make breakfast for himself—and his father, if he was home– then do some quick dusting around the house before brushing through his hair. And some days, when he felt particularly in the mood for something different, right after breakfast he'd head straight over to his small forge and work some beads or clasps. But today he’d woken up before the sun even rose past the peaks of the mountains around his tower. Actually, he’s not sure that he even sleep a wink at all last night.  
  
The reason for it was his one hundred and seventieth birthday, due in under one week’s time. Thorin had come to the decision to put his foot down and finally ask his father to take him to see the floating lights that, coincidentally, appeared every year on his birthday. And _only_ on his birthday. From as far back as he could remember, he had spent every night of his birthday staring out his window, watching the distant glowing lights ascend until he couldn’t make out the lights from the stars anymore.  
  
His father should have been back before daybreak and it had been more than twenty four hours now; the longer that he’s away the more frayed Thorin’s nerves become. He’s nervous for reasons that all revolve around the simple fact of actually leaving the tower. Oh, he had asked a handful of times in the past, but Thorin was never able to reach the point where he actually said the words “I’d like to see the floating lights” before his father had exploded. Figuratively, that is. (Though Thorin would swear it on his left pinky finger that his father had breathed out steam and that his eyes had glowed.)  
  
It’s when Thorin is in the middle of brushing his long golden hair to soothe his jitters that he hears it—a scuffle and a weird muttering coming from his window.  
  
"—adventure he said, it'll be very good for you he said." a voice grumbles, "The next time I see him he is getting a stern talking-to, see if he has any wizard left in him once I'm done."  
  
Thorin leaps to his feet and untangles himself from the pool of his hair, scuttling back to hide against his wardrobe. _Ruffians? Thugs?_ Thorin thinks, ignoring the irrational part of himself telling him to go over there and investigate, _Why today of all days?_  
  
He sees a ball of brown curls pop up above the ledge before a small figure tumbles in and collapses with a gasp for breath right on his nice fur rug. Thorin isn't sure what it is but it doesn't look anything like the ruffians from his father's stories.  
  
His father _. That's it_! Thorin thinks as looks around for a weapon, if he can prove to his father that he's responsible enough (because Mahal knows he's certainly old enough, especially at a century past coming of age) to take down a rogue ruffian, then he's responsible enough to step out of the tower.  
  
The ruffian groans and starts to get up on its knees and Thorin panics. He snatches up his boot and flings it hard, iron-toed end forward, and knocks the ruffian clean out. Ha! Thorin gives himself a mighty pat on the back; he can totally handle himself out there in the world, no matter what his father says. After a moment of standing and awkwardly staring at the slumped figure on his fur rug (it'll need a scrubbing after this, he figures), Thorin remembers that his father is supposed to be home any minute now. Careening back into action he darts left, then right, and left again, unable to make up his mind. What should he do with the body? He doesn't think he's killed it, at least?  
  
"Hello?" he whispers near unaudibly. Thorin grabs a broom and prods the ruffian's back with the handle. "Hello?" he dares whisper a tad louder, using the broom to brush the hair (it was so _short_ ) out of its face. A man? No, he looked too small to be a man, perhaps it was simply a dwarf who hadn't yet aged into maturity. The ruffian's face was bare, completely hairless without a single whisker, but on his head was a mess of curly hair that stuck out at all ends. Though, he had creases below his eyes and at the corners of his mouth, much like Thorin's own aged face, giving the impression of being far older than he looked. At a loss for what to do next, Thorin was thoroughly stumped.  
  
"Thorin," his father's voice drifts in through the open window, "let down your hair!"  
  
Oh no. "Just a moment!" he calls back. He shuffles around uselessly before throwing open the doors to his wardrobe and pulling out the tunics folded on the bottom ledge. With a wince he picks up the hairless stranger-ruffian-dwarf and gently sits him down inside, humorlessly muttering a quick _don't move._  
  
"I'm not getting any younger down here, Thorin."  
  
Thorin doubles back and jams a chair under the wardrobe handles just to be sure, then picks up his hair and slings it over the hook hanging outside the window.  
  
"Ah," his father says once he's hauled up to the inside the tower, "finally."  
  
"Welcome home," Thorin says, taking his father's black cloak. "Er, father, there's something I—"  
  
"Thorin," his father interrupts, "I'm feeling a tad sickly, would you sing for me?"  
  
Thorin blinks and takes in the state of him: the ashy pallor and red rashed flaking skin, the usually spiked fiery hair now looking dull, and says, "Of course."  
  
He putters around, grabbing his father's favorite chair, a stool, and a hairbrush. "Do you smell that?" father asks.  
  
Thorin doesn't freeze, but it's a near thing, "Smell what?"  
  
"It smells... odd."  
  
"Odd," Thorin echoes, gathering up his hair.  
  
"Yes, odd. Something I don't recognize."  
  
"Perhaps it's the dust; I've been meaning to do some spring cleaning for some time now." It's not a lie, not really, but still Thorin doesn't mention that he stress-cleaned the tower only yesterday.  
  
He hums and settles in his chair with the brush. His father's figure is lean and rather fluid for a dwarf, but then again Thorin only has himself to compare to. Because for all that Thorin has read books about dwarves and their history (all in Westron, because his father can't get his hands on any in Khuzdul for some reason) he's never actually seen any other dwarf in person.  
  
He starts to sing and his hair glows from the roots outward, his father brushing it in long strokes with one hand, and with the other smooths the gilded strands with an almost reverent touch. _"—what once was mine_ ," Thorin has done this a million times. Has sat by his father's knee and sang to him to return him to health on a near daily basis, but he can't help but feel like there's something else to it, like something doesn't quite fit. But as it is there's no harm being done using his hair's power so he doesn't mention it. He watches his father's skin return to a healthy glow (though it seems it'll always lean toward the red-tinted side) and the dark under his eyes recede—watches his father age younger before him, Smaug as he's always been for the past century.  
  
"Father, next week is my birthday and I—"  
  
"Already?" Smaug says airily, standing from his seat, "Funny, I distinctly remember it being last year."  
  
"That's the thing about birthdays, they're sort of an annual thing."  
  
"And I suppose you'll be wanting something?" Smaug doesn't wait for a response before continuing, "I am no fool, Thorin. Though I hope you won't ask to leave the tower this time."  
  
Thorin can feel his patience wearing thin; he's spent most of his lifetime holed up in this tower and has spent equally as long looking out his window, and he's afraid that he'll spend however many years he has left never stepping foot outside the mountain's borders. He is afraid of dying here and never knowing anything else besides dust bunnies and wooden floors. The flame of his desire to see the world burns him to his core, and he's nothing if not stubborn and determined.  
  
"I want to see the floating lights."  
  
Smaug pauses, eyes flitting briefly to Thorin, "You mean the stars."  
  
"No, I have charted the stars," Thorin exhales, running over to pull back a curtain to reveal constellations carved into the stone walls of his tower, "and they are always constant, but those floating lights appear only on my birthday. I have to know what they are."  
  
Smaug shakes his head, "The outside world—"  
  
"I can prove to you that I can handle myself out there; in my—"  
  
"No."  
  
"But in the—"  
  
" _No,_ Thorin. We've talked about this, I won't allow it."  
  
Thorin grits his teeth, "But if you would only listen, I have a—"  
  
"You are not leaving this tower, _ever!_ " Smaug roars, clear and commanding. Thorin flinches but doesn't lose his footing and Smaug sighs, darkened and gleaming eyes gone as quickly as they came, and he steps back, muttering, "Great, now I'm the bad guy."  
  
Thorin is silent, fists clenched tight against his sides.  
  
"You know why we stay up in this tower, goldheart," his father says after a pause, one spidery hand coming up to run through Thorin's hair, "A treasure such as this needs to be kept safe, the greed of others is not something to be trifled with."  
  
"I know."  
  
"Good." Smaug taps Thorin's chin, "Now go trim that beard of yours, it's looking," his eyes flick to the crown of golden hair and his frown deepens, "a little long."  
  
Thorin dips his head resignedly, having long figured out that his father despised his beard's inky color, not that of gold like the hair on his skull. As a young dwarf it had never occurred to him what the act of shearing one's beard meant, and he did not figure it out until years later when Smaug chanced upon him a story book, one with a story about a dwarf with glittering gems weaved into her prized and well cared for beard. His father's own beard was sparse, whiskers only on his jaw styled up to his temples with the rest of his hair to resemble spikes.  
  
Thorin knows he should leave in silence now, but in a final desperate act of recklessness, he asks, "Will you not grant me a more reasonable request then?"  
  
Smaug eyes him warily, "And what is that?"  
  
"Emeralds from the mines you found down south, much like the one you brought me the year past."  
  
"Why, that's almost a two week travel!"  
  
Thorin shrugs, staring hard at his father's red overcoat, "I thought it would be better than the... stars."  
  
Smaug slithers over to him and brushes the waves of gold off over his shoulders and grips tight at the bones, his thumb digging uncomfortably into Thorin's collar, "In return, goldheart, you will never ask to leave this tower again."  
  
Smaug departs not fifteen minutes later when the sun has almost fully risen from the east. He takes his leave with nary a comment, only turning back once to level a stern look to Thorin. As soon as Smaug was past the hanging moss covering the exit, and Thorin was sure he wasn't going to come back, Thorin yanks away the chair holding his wardrobe closed.  
  
It wasn't lying. And really, Thorin hadn't even promised anything. He agreed to never _ask_ to leave the tower, but that didn't mean that he couldn't sneak out. Once a dwarf sets his mind to something, then he will see it done. And Thorin, through the sheer power of his stubbornness, is going to go see those lights if it's the last thing he does.  
  
*  
  
Bilbo wakes up to the warbled sound of a question, feeling like he'd been run over by a pack of wargs.  
  
"—are you?"  
  
Bilbo groans and attempts to rub at his pounding skull. Attempts to, that is, because he's tied up. He jerks to attention and stares uncomprehendingly, "Is this... hair?"  
  
"Who are you?" comes the question again.  
  
"Who am- Who am I? I am a hobbit of the Shire," Bilbo stammers, squinting at the direction the voice came from, "who are _you_ , tying up strangers like this! Release me!"  
  
Thorin stalks forward out of the shadows, brows set heavy and heart racing beneath his skin, "I do not answer to ruffians. State your purpose, what do you want with my hair?"  
  
Bilbo realizes that his bonds are indeed hair, and that they lead back to the skull of his captor— a dwarf. "The only thing I want with your hair is to get out of it, literally. In fact, this is rather unsanitary, have you ever heard of a haircut?"  
  
Instantly the sharp edge of a sword is pointed to his chest and Bilbo inhales sharply and leans back as far as he can away from it. Distantly in the back of his mind, he registers that it’s his own sword being used against him, looking very tiny in the dwarf's much larger hands. But even the face of a possible puncture wound, Bilbo finds himself personally offended.  
  
"So you reveal your purpose, you want to cut my hair."  
  
Bilbo shakes his head, "I jest, it was a jest!" He almost sighs in relief when the sword is pulled back, but a tug at the hair holding him in place has him almost crashing to the floor.  
  
The dwarf looks confused, mouth pinched beneath his short beard, "Why are you here then, if not for my hair?"  
  
"Look," Bilbo spreads his hands placatingly, "I was chased around for two days to the point of exhaustion when I found this tower, so I climbed it. Nothing more than that, I promise."  
  
Thorin doesn't look like he believes him, but Bilbo plows on, "If you release me I will speak of this to no one, and my satchel and I will be on our- oh!" Bilbo gasps, looking around frantically, "Oh no no no, my satchel, where is it?"  
  
Thorin crosses his arms and slowly circles around Bilbo, studying him, "I've hidden it."  
  
"You don't understand, I need that satchel or else I'll, I'll die!"  
  
"I know what is inside it," Thorin pauses by his side and Bilbo's breath catches, "It's nothing more than a pretty jewel. I see not how it relates to your life."  
  
"Healing stone!" Bilbo blurts out, relieved that he didn't recognize it as the King's jewel (an amazing feat in itself for a dwarf).  
  
"I have read many books about healing stones, Master hobbit of the Shire, and that jewel is not one of them."  
  
At Thorin's unimpressed look, Bilbo caves, "Okay, I stole it! I have a bounty on my head from two very opposite parties and I would like to get out of here alive, thank you very much!"  
  
"Good. Then I shall offer you a deal."  
  
"But—"  
  
"I shall offer you a deal," Thorin repeats, using Bilbo’s sword to gesture to a wall with a large detailed carving. It was of a small figure perched on a tree watching lights floating upwards from a distant mountain, yellow gems that sparkled like the sun embedded into the stone, "You take me to see the floating lights, return me home safely, and only then will I return to your satchel to you.”

Bilbo squints at the wall, “D’you mean the lanterns they do for the lost prince?”

“Lanterns,” Thorin breathes, turning wide wondering eyes to the carving, “I knew they weren’t stars…”

Bilbo could have refused; he had every right (and intention) to. And if it came down to it, if he was let go then he could easily slip on his ring and take back the jewel when the dwarf was asleep. But here was this dwarf, visibly bursting at the seams with longing for something out of reach from his home, and Bilbo was reminded of himself. He saw himself as a fauntling, sitting on his mother’s knee and asking for stories about elves and dwarves and trolls, saw himself at well past thirty-three, still odd in the eyes of his neighbors for his many walking holidays. But most of all, he saw himself after the wizard had offered him a chance at a real adventure, to see the world that he’s only ever dreamed about. Knowing well the feeling of wanderlust, how can Bilbo refuse?

“I take you to see the lanterns, and then you give me my satchel back?” Bilbo asks, startling Thorin from his daze. Thorin nods and Bilbo purses his lips, knowing he was going to regret this, “Fine. But we stay far away from the Kingdom, I don’t want to be caught unawares by a royal guard, you understand?”

Bilbo ignores the slight crinkle of Thorin’s eyes when he smiles and nods, and instead mutters under his breath, _first a burglar and now a tour guide, what next, a knight in shining armor?_  
  
Thorin, as it turns out, wants to leave immediately.  
  
"No!" Bilbo says, placing his hands on his hips, "It's almost a three day trip, we need supplies, food at least! You wouldn't happen to have a spare handkerchief would you?"  
  
Thorin shoots him a look, "Why would I have any handkerchiefs at all?"  
  
"Right," Bilbo sighs, "Dwarves." Dwarves were the one bunch he wanted to avoid after the mountain, but it seems fate had a wicked sense of humor, seeing as he's now saddled with a dwarf who took his stolen jewel. The irony of that is not lost on him, not in the least.  
  
"We are losing the light." Thorin says ten minutes later.  
  
"I heard you the first three times."  
  
Thorin stands at his window, tapping his feet rapidly against the wooden floors and frowning out at the sky, "How much longer?"  
  
"Oh calm yourself, it's not even luncheon yet," Bilbo shakes his head, tying off the last bundle of fabric, "Done!" Without any packs to be found in the tower Bilbo was left with having to create a makeshift one using spare draperies instead. It wasn't the most conventional, but it's the best they've got. He made two, one for him and a bigger one for Thorin, and filled them to the brim with suitable foodstuffs from the kitchen in the corner of the room.  
  
"Alright then," Bilbo says when they’re both standing at the window, looking down at the grass below. He adjusts the cloth straps over his shoulders, "How do you propose we get down? You've got a rope and a hook?"  
  
Thorin looks over him, then silently tilts his head towards the long train of hair around his feet.  
  
"Oh dear."

Of the top four notable moments of Bilbos life, ranked from the worst to the slightly-less-worse, being elevated down the length of a giant tower with only _hair_ keeping him from falling to his certain death landed a solid place in third. The first and worst was the Fell Winter in the Shire, many years ago where his parents had perished. The second was following after a wizard who claimed that 'an adventure out east would do you a world of good, my dear boy!' Fat load of good it did him, all that this _adventure_ had brought him was misfortune, and that's not even mentioning the fact that somehow along the way he became a hired burglar for two very infamous orc brothers— which led to his next two points. The third, again, clinging to hair for his dear life. And the fourth, the King's jewel. Bilbo doesn't even want to touch on that subject, he just wants to get this trip over with so he can turn over the stone to the orc brothers and finally find a way back to his home.

Oh, what would his dear mother say if she could see him now?

*

_I just have to do it,_ Thorin thinks, gripping his hair, _Here I go._

He comes to a stop just a few inches off the ground and cautiously puts one foot down at a time. It sets off a strange sense of dizziness to be so low on the ground after spending nearly two centuries so high up, but it pales in comparison to the joy of finally being free. Thorin toes off his boots and laughs at the feel of the overgrown grass tickling the soft pads of his feet and splashes in the small pool of water off to the side, not caring about getting the legs of his trousers wet.

He’s not gone very far from his tower, only a handful of steps away really, but he feels like he’s the smallest he’s ever been. The sun is bright and warm on his skin and the wind jostles strands of his golden mane into the air, and even inside the valley the world was already so much larger than it looked through the small space of his window. _This_ is what his father was trying to keep from him: the cool summer breeze, the melodious singing of birds, the crisp smell of the grass. Thorin doesn’t think he’ll be satisfied again if _(when)_ he returns to the tower.

Bilbo, still by the base of the tower, stands patiently. He had directed a surprised frown at the small feet Thorin had—because it was absolutely tiny compared to the dwarf’s height and the size of his hands— but now he had to bite back a smile at the childish glee on the dwarf’s face.

“Come on,” Thorin calls, wearing a wide grin (that Bilbo was sure he wasn’t aware of) on his face. He waves Bilbo over to the cave behind the curtain of moss and wipes his feet dry on the grass, slipping his boots back on.

“We head northeast to Dale and no further than that,” Bilbo says as they pick their way through the forest. He stops when Thorin turns away, “Where are you going?”

“Northeast,” Thorin says with a raised brow, pointing up to the sun, “the sun rises in the east.”

“Yes, but you are heading southeast.” Thorin frowns and Bilbo rolls his eyes, patting him on the arm, “Leave the navigating to me Master dwarf, lest we end up in Mirkwood of all places.”

“Thorin.”

“Sorry?”

“My name is Thorin,” he says, begrudgingly following Bilbo through the trees.

“Oh.” A pause, “Bilbo Baggins. My name,” he clarifies when Thorin grunts questioningly.

They lapse into a comfortable silence until they stop for supper by a thicket of trees, when the sky has turned a myriad of pinks and purples. Bilbo eats with the ferocity of five grubby-handed hobbits—and to be fair he hadn’t eaten in over a day—and not long after, they’re seven rolls of bread lesser than they started with. Their bread and slightly bruised fruits were enough to fill them up and distract them from the cold slowly seeping in, and in Bilbo’s case, from worrying too much about every little rustle of leaves.

They’re not in any danger, as far as he’s concerned, but he doesn’t know how far or long the guards had followed him and where they were now. He eyes his sword that’s seen battle with trolls and wayward spiders, innocently strapped to his hip, wondering if he’d be able to use it against people only doing their job.

“You mentioned something earlier, Mirkwood, what is it?” Thorin says, picking at another roll of bread.

“It’s nothing more than a fairy story, really.” Bilbo shrugs, forcing the steep angle of his shoulders to relax, “Legend has it that in the southernmost part of the Greenwood, there used to live a dragon in an abandoned fortress. Have you never heard this story? I was sure all dwarves knew the tale, seeing as they were part of it.”

Thorin huffs a rough laugh, “I may be a dwarf but I don’t know much about my kind past what I’ve read in books and of what little my father told me.”

Bilbo looks away, realizing that he had treaded into something he probably shouldn’t have. Right then, that’s another thing to add onto the ever growing list of things not to mention to Thorin the Dwarf: the very long train of hair, the very not-long-at-all beard, his father, and probably the boots, too. Clearing his throat for his best storytelling voice, he says, “Well, I am a hobbit, and I have forgotten most of it, but the tale I know might not be so different from the dwarves’.

“Hundreds of years ago a dragon came to lay siege to the Mountain Kingdom, drawn to its wealth, for dragons covet gold above all else. What it did not expect was help that came in the form of men. With the use of a black arrow and a dwarvish windlance, an archer from Dale knocked off a scale from under the left wing; and fearing for its life, the dragon turned hide,” Bilbo pauses to catch his breath, feeling amused to find Thorin staring at him with rapt attention, much like the young faunts he entertained with similar stories back home, “The last of its kind, the great fire drake escaped to an abandoned fortress in the Greenwood.

“Dragons are magic, you know. Some tales say it simply disappeared, but others say that the dragon’s dying breath rotted the surrounding forest, giving it the name Mirkwood—oh but don’t let any of the elves hear you say that, especially the elven King. He gets rather nasty about what lies beyond his borders. But there the dragon stayed, the heart of evil, never to be seen again.”

*

Smaug had found the palace horse.

It couldn’t have been past dusk when he saw it, a horse with a saddle and the insignia of Erebor, nibbling on a patch of grass.

“Where’s your rider?” he whispers with a growing dread. His approach had spooked the horse and it gallops past him, disappearing farther into the forest. The horse had carried the scent of dwarves and of something else that he did not know—but recognition hits him, it was an odd scent, one he smelled earlier that day in the tower.

His nostrils flare and a great heat burns within his breast,

“ _Thief._ ”

**Author's Note:**

> -magic rings are simply magic rings; no One ring  
> -the arkenstone is just a pretty rock  
> -aaand i may have taken liberties with the traveling time/distance between places. staring at maps of middle earth for an hour was enough to fry half my brain so lets just pretend it makes sense  
> -imagining thorin with long golden hair is endlessly amusing to me


End file.
